|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The Menlo Park City School District is facing some unpleasant belt-tightening measures that are likely to result in larger class sizes next fall.
Dwindling property tax revenues, increasing numbers of students, uncertainty over state budget cuts and losses from Lehman Bros. investments are making for a grim financial outlook for the K-8 school district that encompasses much of Menlo Park and Atherton.
On top of that, contributions to the school foundation, which typically donates money amounting to 8 percent of the district’s annual budget, are running about 20 percent below last year’s level, said Superintendent Ken Ranella.
Mr. Ranella outlined the expected shortfall in revenues over the next 18 months at a special three-hour study session meeting with the school board on Feb. 3.
The board didn’t take action, but did direct Mr. Ranella to refine a plan that divides potential budget cuts into three tiers, ranging from least to most painful. Board members did not favor spending down the district’s reserves as a short-term budget fix.
First-tier cutbacks would reduce opportunities for professional development for teachers, charge field trip participants for use of the district bus, postpone updates to computer and technology equipment, and increase class sizes in grades 4-8 through teacher attrition.
“Professional development is clearly going to go away,” Mr. Ranella said.
If the state budget leaves class-size-reduction funding intact, it should protect primary grade classrooms from increasing beyond 20 students per class.
If the district tried to boost class size in kindergarten through third grades, it would actually lose more money than it saved, Mr. Ranella said.
The upper grades are a different story. Bigger classes in grades 4 to 8 mean fewer teachers’ salaries to pay, and no loss of state funding.
The more painful third-tier cutbacks under consideration would reduce elective programs at Hillview Middle School; reduce music, art, physical education and Spanish for elementary grades; reduce remedial education services; and eliminate some supervisory and administrative positions.
“These are more draconian,” Mr. Ranella told the board. “It means a tsunami is happening economically.”
The district is facing a March 15 deadline to notify teachers of layoffs, if necessary. In the meantime, district officials are hoping that decisions will be made on both the federal economic stimulus plan, which could include education funding, and the state budget crisis. Gov. Schwarzenegger is proposing a $300-per-student midyear budget cut, with bigger cuts to follow in the 2009-10 school year.
“We had anticipated some sort of cut, but never in our wildest dreams did we think it would be $300 per child,” Mr. Ranella said.
It’s still unknown how such cuts would affect basic aid districts such as Menlo Park, which keep a larger share of local property taxes in exchange for per-pupil funding from the state. Enrollment in the Menlo Park district has grown 19 percent in the past five years, to 2,409 students, Mr. Ranella said.
Board member Laura Rich said she didn’t want to see important education programs “decimated” until the scope of the budget problem becomes clear. “We worked really hard developing the programs we developed,” she said.
With so many variables in the district’s revenues, Mr. Ranella warned the board against making decisions on budget cuts too soon.
“I don’t want to have to go into a public interaction on cuts until we know we have to make them,” he said.
